It is more thickly inhabited than the southern or San Joaquin Valley, partly because the foot-hills on its eastern side were the scene of the earliest and longest continued, as well as the most successful, mining operations; partly because the Sacramento River is navigable for a longer distance than the San Joaquin, and thus gave facilities for transportation which the lower valley had not; and, finally, because the Sacramento Valley had a railroad completed through its whole extent some years earlier than the San Joaquin Valley.
The climate of the Sacramento Valley does not differ greatly from that of the San Joaquin, yet there are some important distinctions.

Lying further north, it has more rain; in the upper part of the valley they sometimes see snow; there is not the same necessity for irrigation as in the lower valley; and though oranges flourish in Marysville, and though the almond does well as far north as Chico, yet the cherry and the plum take the place of the orange and lemon; and men build their houses somewhat more solidly than further south.
The romance of the early gold discovery lies mostly in the Sacramento Valley and the adjacent foot-hills.

Between Sacramento and Marysville lay Sutter's old fort, and near Marysville is Sutter's farm, where you may still see his groves of fig-trees, under whose shade the country people now hold their picnics; his orchards, which still bear fruit; and his house, which is now a country tavern.
Of all his many leagues of land the old man has, I believe, but a few acres left; and of the thousands who now inhabit and own what once was his, not a dozen would recognize him, and many probably scarcely know his name.

His riches melted away, as did those of the great Spanish proprietors; and he who only a quarter of a century ago owned a territory larger than some States, and counted his cattle by the thousands--if, indeed, he ever counted them--who lived in a fort like a European noble of the feudal times, had an army of Indians at his command, and occasionally made war on the predatory tribes who were his neighbors, now lives upon a small annuity granted him by the State of California.

He saved little, I have heard, from the wreck of his fortunes; and of all who were with him in his earlier days, but one, so far as I know--General Bidwell, of Chico, an able and honorable gentleman, once Sutter's manager--had the ability to provide for the future by retaining possession of his own estate of twenty thousand acres, now by general consent the finest farm in California.
As you go north in California the amount of rain-fall increases.